SILC - Secure Internet Live Conferencing
========================================
-SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a protocol which provides
-secure conferencing services in the Internet over insecure channel.
-SILC is IRC like softwarre although internally they are very different.
-Biggest similarity between SILC and IRC is that they both provide
-conferencing services and that SILC has almost same commands as IRC. Other
-than that they are nothing alike. Biggest differences are that SILC is
-secure what IRC is not in any way. The network model is also entirely
-different compared to IRC.
+SILC (Secure Internet Live Conferencing) is a modern and secure
+conferencing protocol.
+
+
+Features
+========
+
+SILC provides all the common conferencing services like private messages,
+instant messages, channels and groups, and video and audio conferencing.
+The main difference to other protocols is that SILC has been designed with
+security as its main feature - it is not an add-on or optional plugin -
+and security cannot be turned off.
+
+All SILC connections execute SILC Key Exchange protocol, an authenticated
+Diffie-Hellman key exchange algorithm, to generate a shared secret session
+key. All SILC packets exchanged between SILC clients and servers are
+protected with these keys.
+
+All private messages (instant messages) are protected with private message
+keys established using the SILC Key Exchange protocol over the SILC network.
+Private messages can be read only by the sender and the recipient of the
+message. SILC servers along the way cannot decrypt the messages.
+Optionally, private message key may also be a shared secret, such as
+passphrase, or the SILC Key Exchange may be performed peer-to-peer between
+clients. If all these methods fail the session keys are used as the last
+resort fallback to encrypt private messages.
+
+All channel and group messages are protected with channel specific keys
+generated by the SILC routers and only the members of the channel may read
+the messages. Optionally, channel members may set up a shared secret,
+such as passphrase, as the channel key to exclude SILC routers from knowing
+the key.
Running SILC
This will launch the server on to the background.
-Features
-========
-
-Features to be included into the final release of SILC. [Note that the
-current Developer's Version does not include all of these features, read
-TODO file for more information.]
-
- o Normal conferencing services such as private messages, channels,
- channel messages, etc. All traffic is secured and authenticated.
-
- o No unique nicknames. There can same nicknames in SILC without
- collisions. SILC has unique Client ID's, Server ID's and Channel ID's
- to assure that there are no collisions.
-
- o Secure key exchange and authentication protocol. SILC Key Exchange
- protocol provides key material used in the SILC sessions in secure
- manner. The protocol is immune for example to man-in-the-middle
- attacks. The SILC Authentication protocol provides strong
- authentication. Authentication may be based on passphrase or public
- key (RSA) authentication. For clients there is an option not to
- use authentication when connecting to servers.
-
- o All traffic is encrypted and authenticated using the best cryptographic
- algorithms out there. Command messages, private messages and channel
- messages are all protected by encryption. User can set private keys
- for both private message and for channels so that even SILC servers do
- not know the keys. Cipher keys are, by default, 128 bits in length and
- public keys, by default, 1024 bits in length.
-
- o Supports data compression with GZIP to improve performance.
-
- o Supports SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 firewall traversal protocols.
-
- o SIM (SILC Module) support. Support for loading of shared objects at
- run-time that provides new and extended features to both SILC client
- and server. These can provide extra ciphers and extra features to
- the software.
-
- o SILC client can be installed and used without root privileges.
-
- o SILC client can be configured by system wide configuration files but
- with user specific configuration files as well.
-
-
History
=======
-Even though SILC were released in summer 2000 to the public the idea and
-the protocol itself is quite old. I got the idea about SILC in its
-current form in the year 1996 and first lines of codes were written in
-early 1997. This release is now third rewrite of the SILC. The very first
-version were written in 1997 and it included SILC client and very very
-preliminary SILC server. The server actually weren't usable but the
-client looked pretty much the same as it does now. At that time the SILC
-also included RSA implementation and 3DES implementation. The random
-number generator that exists in this current release is actually based on
-the RNG written in 1997. The RNG written in 1997, on the other hand, were
-based on the SSH's random number generator. The RNG has been rewritten
-twice since the first version.
-
-I stopped writing the SILC later in 1997 when I got busy at school and in
-work. The pause lasted several months. The development resumed in 1998
-when my friend (Juha Räsänen) and I implemented ElGamal algorithm. I
-rewrote some other parts as well. However, for the same reasons as
-previously the development stopped again. I resumed the development later
-in 1998 by doing rewrite of the SILC in C++. This was obviously a mistake
-but at that time it seemed like a good idea. Again, in the winter 1999 I
-got very busy writing my thesis and was forced to stop the development
-again. I also, started a new job in the spring.
-
-Later, in 1999, I decided that this time I'm going to make it the right
-way. C++ was obviously a bad choice so I decided to fall back to plain C
-language. I also decided to do complete rewrite and started doing more
-thorough planning of what the SILC actually should include. I also
-decided that this time it is going to kill me before I stop the
-development. I started writing SILC in the weekends and actually
-everytime I had some spare time. I also started a new job but I didn't
-let that get to my way. The result of this development effort is the
-release now in public.
-
-I've learned a lot by doing the SILC. I guess, when I started it I wasn't
-that good of a C programmer. That alone was a reason why SILC hasn't seen
-the day of light before now. My programming style has also changed
-dramatically during these years. Actually, it has changed couple times
-since this last rewrite as well. However, the code style of current SILC
-release is quite consistent (actually the coding style SILC has been
-written now I've learned in my current job).
-
-There is probably over 85% of new code in this third rewrite. Rest has
-just been copied from the old versions and only minor changes has been
-made (like changed function names and overall coding style). I've
-preserved the dates of the old files (dating back to 1997) that has
-existed in some forms in the old versions. There is a lot of new code but
-already I see a lot that needs rewriting. The development continues.
+SILC was developed between 1996 and 1999 and released to public in 2000.
+SILC was originally developed by Pekka Riikonen.
Contact
Official SILC project web site : http://silcnet.org/
FTP archive for SILC project : ftp://ftp.silcnet.org/
-Development mailing list address : silc-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
+Development mailing list address : silc-devel@lists.silcnet.org
SILC Server : /server silc.silcnet.org
- Pekka Riikonen <priikone@silcnet.org>
projects / silc.git / blobdiff